Nigeria verifying if bomber is abducted Chibok school girl

Army frees 800 Boko Haram hostages

LAGOS, March 27, (AFP): Nigeria is sending a team to Cameroon on Monday to verify a would-be suicide bomber’s claim that she is one of the 276 school girls kidnapped by the Boko Haram from the northern town of Chibok.

With less than a month before the twoyear anniversary of the brazen kidnapping which shook the world, 219 Chibok students are still missing and there are few signs that the Nigerian government is making progress on securing their release.

The Nigerian government said it would be sending a team to the Cameroonian capital Yaounde to meet the girl, who was arrested along with another would-be bomber. They will “verify whether a female suicide bomber arrested ... is one of the missing school girls abducted in Chibok”, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s spokesman Garba Shehu said.

There was no guarantee that she was speaking the truth, said Shehu.

“Doubts have crept into the claim following new information from Cameroon that the two girls were aged about ten years”, Shehu said.

“One of the two is also believed to be heavily drugged and therefore not in full control of her senses”, he said.

The two arrested would-b bombers each wore a 12 kg (26 pound) belt of explosives.

The “Bring Back Our Girls” advocacy group said Sunday that the Nigerian government needed to move fast see if she was indeed a kidnapped Chibok student.

“For us if the claim turns out to be true brings hope that the girls are alive,” spokesman Rotimi Olawale told AFP.

“The Chibok community is hopeful that this will be a breakthrough,” said Olawale.

“But it brings a sense of urgency because Boko Haram may be using these girls as suicide bombers”.

However, Olawale said the youngest Chibok girl captured by Boko Haram was 16 years old.

“I think that the details are sketchy,” Olawale said. “We expect that in the next 48 hours the government will have gotten to the bottom of this”. In total, 276 schoolgirls were kidnapped by Boko Haram on April 14, 2014 as they were preparing for end-of-year exams in the remote northeastern town.

Boko Haram has carried out suicide bombings often using girls as part of its armed campaign to establish an Islamic state in northern Nigeria.

Also:

LAGOS: Nigerian troops have freed more than 800 people held by Boko Haram Islamist fighters in multiple villages in the country’s restive northeast, the army said Thursday.

All the hostages were rescued in Borno state with 520 recovered in Kusumma village on Tuesday after a confrontation with Boko Haram fighters, and a further 309 from 11 other villages under the Islamist group’s control.

“The gallant troops cleared the remnants of the Boko Haram terrorists hibernating in Kala Balge general area,” army spokesman Sani Usman said in a statement, adding that 22 “terrorists” were killed.

Three Islamists were killed and one was captured alive during the second raid on the 11 villages. Usman said items recovered included arms, axes and a motorcycle.

The military operations came on the same day that Boko Haram abducted 16 women, including two girls, in neighbouring Adamawa state.

“We received report of the kidnap of 14 women and two girls by gunmen believed to be Boko Haram insurgents near Sabon Garin Madagali village”, said Adamawa state police spokesman Othman Abubakar.